ritical juncture in his affairs he showed signs of an
altered life if not a changed heart. Perhaps it was only that "the bank"
being closed against him he had no further use for gold dust. Anyhow the
sluice boxes were molested no more forever. But it was impossible to
repress the abounding energies of such a nature as his, and he
continued, possibly from habit, the tortuous courses which he had
pursued for profit of Mr. Bentley. After a few tentative and resultless
undertakings in the way of highway robbery--if one may venture to
designate road-agency by so harsh a name--he made one or two modest
essays in horse-herding, and it was in the midst of a promising
enterprise of this character, and just as he had taken the tide in his
affairs at its flood, that he made shipwreck. For on a misty, moonlight
night Mr. Brentshaw rode up alongside a person who was evidently leaving
that part of the country, laid a hand upon the halter connecting Mr.
Gilson's wrist with Mr. Harper's bay mare, tapped him familiarly on the
cheek with the barrel of a navy revolver and requested the pleasure of
his company in a direction opposite to that in which he was traveling.

It was indeed rough on Gilson.

On the morning after his arrest he was tried, convicted, and sentenced.
It only remains, so far as concerns his earthly career, to hang him,
reserving for more particular mention his last will and testament,
which, with great labor, he contrived in prison, and in which, probably
from some confused and imperfect notion of the rights of captors, he
bequeathed everything he owned to his "lawfle execketer," Mr. Brentshaw.
The bequest, however, was made conditional on the legatee taking the
testator's body from The Tree and "planting it white."

So Mr. Gilson was--I was about to say "swung off," but I fear there has
been already something too much of slang in this straightforward
statement of facts; besides, the manner in which the law took its course
is more accurately described in the terms employed by the judge in
passing sentence: Mr. Gilson was "strung up."

In due season Mr. Brentshaw, somewhat touched, it may well be, by the
empty compliment of the bequest, repaired to The Tree to pluck the fruit
thereof. When taken down the body was found to have in its waistcoat
pocket a duly attested codicil to the will already noted. The nature of
its provisions accounted for the manner in which it had been withheld,
for had Mr. Brentshaw previously b